In today's information-centric world, handheld devices, such as cellular phones, smart phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and portable media players, among others, have proliferated rapidly throughout the general public and the business community. The computing power of these devices has increased and the networks on which handheld devices operate have seen dramatic growth. As a result of these advancements, these devices now provide access to a wide range of applications that were traditionally available via desktop computers and laptop computers. For example, wireless networks now provide handheld device users with access to email, media, and documents, such as web pages, articles, blogs, and electronic books.
Selecting icons or entering text, while relatively easy to accomplish through a traditional input device (e.g., a keyboard or mouse), presents unique challenges for handheld device users. For example, handheld devices with touch screens typically require users to touch or tap an icon or graphical button to select a command or enter text. Users often need to tap these small icons or graphical buttons in a correct sequence to perform a command. The more taps that the user must undertake, the more likely an error will occur, often to the frustration of the user.
Gestures often substitute for hardware controls for handheld devices having touch screens. The gestures should seem natural so they are easy to remember without physical labels to remind users of what to do. The gestures must also not require too much dexterity, as fingertips are very large and imprecise compared to a traditional mouse pointer. Furthermore, due to its limited screen size, any graphic controls that are visible on a touch screen, particularly when reading a document, unnecessarily consume screen real estate. The small screen also constrains the size of images and formatted text that cannot be reflowed to fit the screen.
In addition, when a user wishes to navigate within a document, such as an electronic book, the user may wish to jump to an arbitrary page or the beginning of a chapter. Both navigational methods suffer when confined to traditional controls on a small screen. For example, manually entering a page number to jump to is cumbersome and a continuous control, such as a slider, must be divided into many increments. Hitting a precise page of a large book comprising many pages is virtually impossible when operating a slider control on a small screen. Still further, backlighting can appear glaring in the dark, ruin night vision, and cause eye strain. Handheld devices typically allow a user to control the brightness of a backlight, but only through device settings. To access these device settings, users must exit applications, which is inconvenient. Therefore, there is a need for improved systems and methods that overcome the above problems.